Friday September 1: On my recent trip to Kazanluk and Kurdjali, I experienced a reaction from people that was opposite to the one present when I had been there six months before. The last time I went to the eastern Rhodopes, I found Bulgarian ethnic-Turks who were still recovering from the trauma of having their names changed decades ago. This time I met up with Bulgarians who expressed frustration with the Turks.

My rakia partner, who works cutting down trees, said he couldn't find a job in Kurdjali because he's got a Bulgarian last name. The political party backed by most Bulgarian Turks controls the Agriculture Ministry, affecting his business, he said. But Turkish people managed to work in his hometown somehow and make money. It didn't seem fair.

Our driver kept pointing out mosques to us, saying the Turks received money from elsewhere because clearly they weren't making any money in their hometowns - but they kept building or fixing up their mosques! This opinion was shared between him telling us about how much he enjoys the company of 17-year-old Roma prostitutes, who can be met on the street in Kurdzhali and charge 15 leva an hour.

The Bulgarians often discussed the so-called odd habits of the Turks. On the side of the road we saw a bus stop where all the women were sitting on the curb next to the street while one man occupied a bench that had room for all of them. There was also a lot of talk about how the Bulgarian Turkish men socialised only with each other, never with their women. Yet, at the same time, there was also great fear of the Turks multiplying too swiftly and outpacing the Bulgarians.

I remembered how my interlocutor in Momchilgrad (a Bulgarian Turk town near Kurdjali) was a successful dentist who drove a Mercedes. He was a very nice guy who made a tidy living in his hometown.

It struck me that in Bulgaria, everything is executed via vruski (connections). Is it any surprise that Turks who come from towns where tobacco is the most lucrative product would resist outsiders who want a piece of their tiny economic pie? No. They keep it in the family.

With their own names.

None of the Bulgarians objected when I said I bet they didn't want ethnic Turks working for them. Though at the Perperikon archeological site, the workers were mostly Turks and the lead archeologist is a Bulgarian. Some of the workers were clearly skilled.

Digging carefully among the ruins, they were unearthing Bulgaria's patrimony.

A friend has been looking into Bulgarian citizenship. One of the requirements is proficiency in Bulgarian. I wonder: If one spoke fluent Turkish, could one use that language to acquire a Bulgarian passport?

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When I returned to Sofia, I went to a party where one of the guests said someone had shot at them while they were driving on Tsarigradsko Shosse. There was some mix-up where they all stopped quickly, and then, when the car behind them passed, the guy on the passenger side stuck a gun out the window and popped off a few shots.

No one was hurt. But the episode reminded me of the stories I'd heard in the Bronx. Sometimes it seems to me that, with its intertribal tensions and the underlying arbitrary violence, the way families live together and lovers pass amongst each other, Bulgaria is like the Bronx.

Like in the Bronx, no one really knows the whole truth about the place. At the same party, I had a long debate with a Bulgarian woman who claimed that five million people lived in Sofia. I just had to disagree. I told her Sofia couldn't compare to the cities I'd lived in with five million people. It didn't seem to offer half as much as other five-million-person cities offer. Bulgaria's National Statistic Institute calculates Sofia's population as 1.5 million. The number must be bigger than that, though. No one knows.

The Bronx is not half as pleasant as Bulgaria, of course. Except that one doesn't have to wait 20 minutes for a hamburger at a corner joint in the Bronx. I recently had to wait that long at a doner shop, but it's no big deal to have to wait for a hamburger.

So it is with regret that I now leave Bulgaria - for at least six or seven months. When I return, I expect the country to be part of the European Union, with membership in that auspicious organisation solving all the country's problems, and everyone smiling happily.

Catch y'all later, yo.